Many of the Hub’s best features await on the Web. At your own private setup Web site, you can play your voice mail messages, manage your address book, upload photos for the Hub’s screensaver, edit the calendar using your computer’s real keyboard (instead of the Hub’s on-screen tap-able one) and control a passel of settings, including Do Not Disturb.
Additional handsets cost US$80, which is too much. The monthly US$35 fee, however, isn’t bad. Yes, it’s more than you’d pay for Internet phones like Vonage’s (about US$25), but you’re also getting a lot more, including the TV shows, radio and unlimited text and picture messages.
For a company not known for its hardware and software design, Verizon Wireless has built a promising first iteration of the Hub — and the concept behind it is delightful. Let’s hope that the company gets those refinements into place for a 2.0 version soon — because, as everyone knows, home phones are about to disappear altogether.
RSS